Book Notes: 'Volt' by Alan Heathcock

Wednesday

Apr 20, 2011 at 12:01 AMApr 20, 2011 at 8:21 PM

Krafton is a fictional small town in rural America. This is where 39-year-old short story writer Alan Heathcock goes to work, showing us how confounding human struggles — love, violence, hard work, monotony — shape a life. He shows us, too, and how it all folds together in a sometimes sad, sometimes desperately poignant thing called community.

Krafton is a fictional small town in rural America. This is where 39-year-old short story writer Alan Heathcock goes to work, showing us how confounding human struggles — love, violence, hard work, monotony — shape a life. He shows us, too, and how it all folds together in a sometimes sad, sometimes desperately poignant thing called community.

His new collection of short stories, “Volt,” is intriguing, too, for the quality of its craft. Who is this talented writer, with his gift for storytelling? Who is the man wearing a fedora in his photograph who pulls from us the surprise of compassion for those who sin and suffer? Who makes these standout spare and gorgeous sentences?

Krafton feels like a frontier settlement, detached from the safety net of a benevolent American society. There’s a lot more going on in the bars than in social media. All alone, it seems, Krafton struggles with contemporary problems like the Iraq war and children with too much time on their hands.

A young soldier home on leave leads an earnest young woman into extreme danger. Kids smash storefronts with bowling balls. Floods swallow the fields, homes and stores. Days later, when the waters finally recede, everything reeks. An old farmer kills a young girl and then hangs her from a tree. Friends betray each other. Not even the livestock escape torment. Sometimes I wondered, is this where those boys from “Lord of the Flies” wound up? But the answer is clearly no. In Krafton there are mothers who pay attention, a minister and a congregation who intervene, and families — bent on survival — that enforce their own codes of justice.

In “Peacekeeper,” Helen Farraley is appointed Krafton’s first law officer. Before that, the middle-age woman had worked at the general store. She practices a nuanced form of justice where her ideas about peace supersede the letter of the law. She has history with the townspeople that enmeshes her and endangers her. She is not the law enforcer but the one responsible for Krafton’s delicate balance. She looks for ways to ease the suffering and protect people from the most grievous types of violence.

In “The Staying Freight,” the first story in the book, a young and relatively successful farmer named Winslow accidentally drives his tractor over his young son. He flees across the farmlands, through forests and eventually into unfamiliar territory. He winds up working for another farmer and, at night, takes beatings while other men place bets in a savage sport arranged by his boss. Right and wrong are determined here, not by logic, but by a system of relativity. The boss, despite the savagery he inflicts on this broken and vulnerable man, is fond of Winslow and invites him to spend Christmas with his family. In a stunning scene toward the end of the story, Krafton’s minister penetrates Winslow’s grief and performs a spiritual resuscitation. “The damned things I’ve seen in my years,” the minister tells Winslow. “God gets around to all of us. Every last one of us. Who the hell knows what to do about it?”

In “Fort Apache,” kids destroy the town, clearly not for the first time, using bowling balls from the burned-down bowling alley. It’s Walt’s birthday and he wants out of Krafton. One of his friends says, “Stay or go, it’s all the same.” This trap, as Walt thinks of it, inspires the rage, perhaps, that’s behind the extreme vandalism.

Vernon helps his father burn up the man he murdered in “Smoke.” His father, despite killing the man, tells his son he feels a “powerful tenderness” for him. Vernon is confused by his father’s statement. “Mr. Augusto would’ve killed you,” he tells his dad. “Then he’d be the bad man,” his father replies.

Author Alan Heathcock teaches fiction writing at Boise State University and is a native of Chicago.